Traditional management vs. geo-management: 5 differences that change how your company organizes work

We hear it daily: be dynamic, be agile, stay ahead — only then will our company hold its position in ever more competitive business ecosystems. For companies, it means never pausing in the race to adjust and meet what demand requires and the service quality agreed with clients; that, combined with the technological change we are inescapably part of, calls for a real capacity to adapt. 

So what is the key to improving service and attracting more clients? Quite simply, improving — or rather, revolutionizing — how we manage processes. Traditional management does not account for processes outside the office, away from physical proximity to colleagues and face-to-face contact… with some difficulty, we add instant messaging to our teams, always with one eye on the risk that it creates miscommunication. 

Keeping the workforce together and connected is essential, as is building harmonious, smooth processes that fit how we work and that carry no administrative friction of their own to act as a brake. Achieving simple, centralized processes across geographic dispersion is the challenge, and the answer is a new model for managing processes. At GoDoWorks, where we have spent a decade refining the solutions of that new model, we call it geo-management. 

1. Geo-management is built on mobility, and uses connectivity as its tool

Where traditional management processes are tied to fixed, physical supports — an office or any fixed workspace — geo-management works within the paradigm of mobility and therefore of adaptability.

Thanks to the connectivity mobile devices provide, we do not need to limit our workforce's operational reach, nor lose quality in communication, follow-up, monitoring, operational traceability or efficiency in recording processes. All of that is included, digitally, in geo-management and in digital work recording processes, within a mobility paradigm.

2. Geo-management treats knowledge as an indispensable tool, and turns it into efficiency and productivity

It is essential to know the service we provide, the response time that characterizes our workforce's field operations, and how well clients are served face to face. In traditional management, that data comes from complicated administrative processes tied to paperwork and the inefficiencies that brings. Beyond being less reliable than digital records, and creating duplication in the workflow, they are no use as a real-time solution. 

Geo-management can give us the information we need, right now. That lets us respond to demand immediately and solve problems on the spot. It gives us the ability to organize and coordinate staff efficiently wherever they are, and it generates valuable business intelligence insights.

3. Geo-management rests on maturity: technological, operational and people-management maturity

Equipping the workforce with digital tools brings a realignment of processes that strengthens everyone in the company. Field staff, with better tools, become more motivated and better integrated into the work they carry out. Supervisors' coordination of processes becomes more transparent, and each person can focus better on getting tasks done, thanks to the simplicity of the processes and their clear systematization. 

4. Geo-management brings suppliers and end clients into its processes

That digital connectivity also makes it possible to take in the end client's feedback and give them information about the services that connect them to our company. In other words, geo-management is also a tool for improving client relationships. It lets us know and serve the client better, broaden the relationship, give them confidence that the service will be delivered, and negotiate better contracts in future. 

Geo-management also captures important information about our relationship with suppliers, streamlining invoicing. Instead of normalizing invoicing weeks after the fact, it can happen immediately. It also delivers traceability in purchasing supplies, which can be vital for weighing the performance and health of our operations and our finances.

5. The key to geo-management is centralizing processes

A company may have the best ERP (enterprise resource planning system), the best CRM (customer relationship management) or the best Service Desk, but if it still has to centralize information, it is operating with traditional management. Geo-management, by contrast, is a management model that gathers and systematizes the processes and information produced within the mobility paradigm — that is, it centralizes scattered information automatically. 

From that centralization come administrative simplicity on one side and better adaptation to demand on the other. By eliminating paper records, it makes recording processes and the related administrative work more efficient. 

It also systematizes the information captured: it produces statistics and enables real-time analysis, immediately. So geo-management lets us adapt to demand easily, improve performance and be better prepared, over the long term, to meet the demand of the future.

In the search for better tools to boost productivity, it is time to think about the future of management models. Equipping companies with the tools of that future is our mission here at GoDoWorks.